create-react-app (CRA) is great for getting started super-fast. It has just about everything you need for building all but the most demanding apps. It is, however, opinionated in how things get set up, and I’ve been chafing at the limitations for a while.
I wrote an app for figuring out which routes I need to ride on Zwift so that I can collect a badge. It’s optimized for a phone device (since that is where I used it). You can use it for free. Where to get it. You can find it at Zwift Routes or http://bit.ly/zwiftroutes. Point your mobile phone browser to the site, then pin the site to your home screen. How to use it There are only two screens - the list screen and the details screen. At the top of the list screen is a menu button th...
I have a new app I am working on. It’s sort of a 1990’s style text MUD, but I’m bringing it “up to this century” with a host of new features. I’m writing the first front-end in React. So, what does a modern MUD app look like? Well, I’m not into storing usernames and password any more, so I’m going to use a Microsoft OAuth service instead of a user database. My front end application handles state through Redux. Configuring Redux I’ve got a store set up as follows: import { applyMiddlew...
Flutter is not a build system. I know, it’s a terrible way to start, but you have to accept that you need to produce a build system for Flutter. There are build systems written in Dart (such as this one), and I’m sure this situation will get better, but right now? There isn’t a good build system. So I use the node package manager. Here is my basic flow: Run npm init -y. Edit the produced package.json file to use flutter under the covers. Run flutter with npm start instead of the ...
I’m currently writing a cloud-native app with an Android (and iOS) front end. I’ve got my backend configuration written using Terraform, and it outputs a file called infrastructure.json that describes the backend in a JSON format. Now, the question becomes “how do I get that infrastructure.json file into my front end code?” A simple version of this would be to ensure I copy the file every single time I update it. However, a better solution would be to ensure the file exists and to copy it...